Snowden Rips Obama for Not Closing Gitmo

Monday morning Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian oversaw a question and answer session between Edward Snowden and selected readers.

One reader asked, “Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?” Snowden replied by ripping President Obama, including for what he described as “human rights abuses” at Guantanamo Bay:

advertisement

Obama’s campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.